


The City Outside

by Sunquail



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: BBL spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Comfort/Angst, Gen, Post-Series, Unreality?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 11:26:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2650319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunquail/pseuds/Sunquail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You wake up, as is becoming usual for you, somewhere you don’t recognise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The City Outside

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this for BBL day this year. this is my post-series headcanon because I hate joy so have fun with this!
> 
> (whispers ship my ot3 with me)

You wake up, as is becoming usual for you, somewhere you don’t recognise.

It’s sunny, almost too bright for you after the darkness, and you shield your eyes though the light isn’t coming from one sun, one source, it’s everywhere. There’s grass, soft and prickly under your feet, and it’s the kind of late-afternoon warmth on your skin that you hadn’t felt in years. And you know it’s not real because you’re still not sure you can remember the feel of grass, or the sun, and you’re still dead, and this is a dream.

Two figures, a bird and a little girl, are talking excitedly, sat on the hill a few yards from you. You blink through the light, after another moment, and manage to focus on them. There’s nothing else around, just grass and flowers fading into brightness after a certain distance. And you, and them, and it’s usual for you, and you take some hesitant steps towards them.

He doesn’t look any different, but she does, and this settles with you uneasily. He glances at you briefly, and his expression darkens, just a little. She ignores you and carries on talking, the louder and chattier of the pair, stringing daisies together through the last’s stem - the chain was long, you thought, following it with your eyes down the hill until it vanished into the white. You keep your eyes on the flowers, and don’t even look at your company when you address them.

"Having fun?"

The girl replied instantly. You turn to her after a moment, and you can see her face, can see her smile, and you know it and you miss it, how it pulls at you. In her eyes, though, she isn’t there. You glance at her friend. Your friend. You don’t know if he’s noticed. He’s watching her, too, and it’s a look you recognise - fondness, affection beyond measure, and longing.

You want to reach out to him, and he glances at you briefly like he sensed that. His shoulders tense, and then relax. He doesn’t belong here, and neither do you, and you both know it, but he’s happy and his expression makes you ache. “Please let me stay,” he murmers so she can’t hear him, “a little longer. Just a little more.”

She giggles and says something unprompted, and you note that she is, for lack of a better term, scripted. It seems this has happened before. Though whether it was real, or in his mind as was everything these days, you—

—are in the rain, and for once - for once it’s hitting you and it’s cold, it’s - how long has it been? You’re startled, and uncomfortable and familiarly annoyed and you look up and it’s on your face and clinging to your feathers and you want to laugh but it’s still not real, it’s still second-hand sensation from him. And he’s there, and so is she, and she’s laughing but not inside herself again, they’re under a tree huddled close and…comfy, and familiar. It looked nice. You didn’t belong here, you reminded yourself, you were the intruder here, and you liked to feel the rain, so you stayed where you were. She looked at you, once, and she grinned, but didn’t say anything. You miss his expression entirely but you could hazard a guess based on what else you’ve seen. He still doesn’t quite fit, either.

"How many times, Kawara?"

He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move, but he looks light on his feet, like he’s ready to bolt from you, like he’s running from you, torn between that and staying. You give him a chance to, but he remains, and you continue. “You’re dreaming,” you tell him over the rain, and he darts his eyes at you - he knows, you know he knows, but it’s good to be upfront about these things. You’re the one who needs to remember. You’re the one who needs to wake him up when the time comes.

"You need to keep that in mind. That’s all."

"I miss this."

He’s looking sidelong at her now. It feels like it’s been forever since either of you have seen her like this. Well, maybe it has. You don’t know how much time has passed since then. You, truthfully, don’t know if the time to wake up WILL ever come. You weren’t optimistic - far from it. More like stubborn. And he needed something to hold onto. It would be easy to lose him in here.

"It won’t be like this ever again, will it."

"Probably not. Though, that doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed at all."

He nods, and reaches out to run a feather across her hair. “I miss this. I miss her. I could stay here, and—”

"It’s not real."

He straightens up, and for a second the scenery flickers, black and endless and nothing. “But maybe it’s better like this.”

—And then you’re dry, in the library again, and you didn’t realise at all how much you’d missed the familiarity and warmth and - well, maybe not the noise, but it was reassuring all the same. You’d been stuck here for a long time, of course, but even so, you could never grow to despise it, not really. They’re laughing, and the others are bickering across a table. You think you remember the discussion. Things were a little easier to remember when she was here, and the others, too. And there’s you, a little ways off, a book you can’t read in front of you, but you’re watching over the top of it anyway. They’re close together, shoulders touching, and it’s nothing out of the ordinary. Relaxing, you supposed. All was well. It…seems like this happened recently, even. You have some trouble flooring yourself, remembering yourself this is fabricated, remembering where you are and what happened to him. He’s happy. You stare, you stare and watch and you can’t hear the others anymore, but a raw buzzing under everything, and he’s.

You turn the book’s page, where it stops being a book and becomes a box and file upon file spills out of it onto the table, onto the floor (they all have your name written on them, scribbled furiously over them) and he instantly stares at you from across the table, horrified, outraged that you would—

You’re back outside in the rain for a split second. Then it’s sunny, you’re under a tree and you can hear someone crying, a child, somewhere

you’re looking at a lump of gleaming amber in your wings—his—yours—a shadow leaves and a door closes

you can hear the ocean, and a little girl squealing in delight

a woman has her back turned to you, she says not to worry, and an open letter is on the kitchen table (you know this guilt)

he apologises for being late to work, to class, and you can hear the choke held back in his throat

he holds hands with her for the first time it really means something else to him.

You can smell ginger and orange peel. You close your eyes.

You shouldn’t be here.

 

* * *

 

It’s dead silent when you open them again, and dark, though little pools of light eratically spotted around you indicate there’s a floor of some kind, anyway. You’re stood a few metres from him, and you’re not surprised to see him curled in on himself, still, save the gentle and slow movements of his breathing. Aside from you, he is alone. You approach him, making no noise as you do, and settle beside him. You’re not sure if you should speak, for a moment, and it takes you a minute to do so. “I’m sorry,” you think is an appropriate start, “I didn’t know that would happen.”

You think he doesn’t respond, but the barest inclination of his head suggests a shake. “No. That was…that was me. I…” He sighed, and curled into himself tighter. “I don’t…”

He breaks himself off, uncovers his face so he’s staring right ahead. His eyes look tired, and defeated. “I want to stay a little longer. I have to go back and see her, and stay with her, I’m…s-sorry, I’m sorry. Let’s move on now, I’m sorry. She’ll miss me. Mom will miss me. I need to go back. I need to…”

It takes you a second to recognise that he doesn’t mean to be saying this for you to hear him.

"Nageki…" he begins, and he doesn’t look up at you. You can see him shaking. You’d like to reach out to him again, and this time you do. His back stills under your wing for an instant. "Nageki. It’s all going to work out, right?"

You stare at him for a very long time. You look up finally, and you’re dizzied a little, and on pulling together your senses, you’re still in storage. It’s still black-dark. It’s still freezing, and you can’t feel it. You can still hear the low constant humming of the power running through the veins of this place and you’re still trapped in the underbelly of all you’d known in the world for years and years and years and he’s still under your wing, stone still, and curled up around a large, glass jar. The water inside it is unmoving. His form around it blocks the contents, but you remember what it was.

You remember the blankness of her eyes in his memory. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t anywhere.

She hadn’t been for a while, now.

…It’s all going to work out, right?

You sigh. You look back up to him. He’s staring at you now, his eyes wide and dark and…almost pleading. Like the weight of his world lies dependent on your answer. The jar is gone. And you reply.

Dawn would come, soon. But you couldn’t take away from these moments he’d get left with her. None of this was your place - though it was all your doing, and you couldn’t ruin this boy further, and maybe you were weak, a coward for it. But you…you just.

"Yeah. It will. It’s going to be fine."


End file.
